Autumn Killing (23 page)

The clock on the yellow textured wallpaper says 2.25.

Lovisa looks at Johan, the pleasant, softly spoken officer out of the two she’s been set to work with. Competent and inoffensive.

Evidently Waldemar is also competent, and at lunch over at the National Forensics Laboratory she noticed how the other officers treated him with the respect the police usually reserve for officers who really know how to make things happen.

‘Time’s getting on,’ Waldemar says, settling down at his place at the table, in front of a screen showing the contents of Jerry Petersson’s hard-drives in neat folders.

‘I can’t think straight,’ Johan says. ‘So much fucking paper.’

‘The only thing I can see that could have a direct connection to the case,’ Lovisa says, ‘is the company Petersson owned with Jochen Goldman. The one dealing with the books and the income from interviews with Goldman. The company accounts look terrible. Maybe there’s more money somewhere, or else the interest or capitalisation value of Goldman’s celebrity status was a lot higher.’

‘Capitalisation value,’ Waldemar says. ‘You sound like a right nerd.’

‘We’ll mention it at the next meeting,’ Johan says.

‘The morning meeting first thing tomorrow,’ Waldemar says, and Lovisa thinks that no one could be less suited to paperwork than him.

Katarina Fågelsjö, dressed in dark jeans and a pink tennis shirt, is leaning back on a sofa that Malin knows comes from Svenskt Tenn and costs a fortune. The fabric of the sofa was designed by Josef Frank, old-fashioned black tendrils snaking through leaves in strong autumn colours against a pale blue background.

A fortune, she thinks. At least by my standards, and then she thinks how badly she fits in with this room, conscious of how cheap her H&M jeans look, her woollen sweater, how vulgar her sports socks are, and how scruffy she is as a whole compared to Katarina Fågelsjö. Malin feels like creeping along the walls, taking up as little space as possible, but she knows this won’t do, so she’ll have to hide her insecurity behind brusqueness.

A fragile wooden table in front of them, three cups of coffee that neither Malin, Zeke nor Katarina Fågelsjö have touched. The whole room smells of lemon-scented detergent and some expensive, famous perfume that Malin can’t place. Paintings on the walls. Classical, but with the same aura of quality as Jerry Petersson’s artworks. A lot of portraits of women by windows in bright light, women who all seem to be waiting for something. One painting in particular, of a woman by a window facing the sea, takes Malin’s interest. She reads the signature: Anna Ancher.

Through the large living-room windows Malin and Zeke can see the Stångån River flowing gently past, the raindrops forming small, fleeting craters as they hit the surface. On the other side of the river large villas clamber up the slope towards Tanneforsvägen, but it’s regarded as much smarter to live on this side of the river, closer to the centre.

As far as Malin can tell, Katarina lives alone in the large, modernist villa from the thirties beside the Stångån, and she’s in a more obliging frame of mind now than she was at the driving range.

‘Go ahead,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’ll answer as best as I can.’

‘Did you know that your father tried to buy back Skogså from Jerry Petersson?’ Zeke asks.

‘I knew. And I didn’t approve.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s a closed chapter for me. We have everything we could possibly need anyway. But obviously I couldn’t stop him trying. Jerry Petersson was the rightful owner of the castle. That’s all there was to it.’

‘And your brother?’ Malin asks, looking at Katarina, the way she seems to be struggling with something, and if Malin asks open questions she might start talking, revealing some secret that could take them forward.

‘He would probably have liked to see the castle bought back.’

‘Were you angry with him because of his investments?’

‘So you know about that?’ Katarina acts surprised. ‘Naturally, it was a mistake that Father gave my brother access to the family capital. He’s never been particularly talented. But as to whether I was angry? No. Do you know about the Danish inheritance?’

Malin nods.

‘Do you think we got Petersson out of the way because he was the only thing standing between us and getting Skogså back?’

Malin looks at Zeke, he’s gazing out of the windows, and she wonders what he’s thinking about. Karin Johannison? Maybe, maybe not. You’ve got a wife, Zeke, but who the hell am I to criticise anyone else? We share our secrets, Zeke.

‘You could have told us all this out at the golf club,’ Malin says.

‘At the driving range,’ Katarina corrects with a shrug.

‘Why do you think your brother tried to get away from us?’

‘He was driving under the influence. He couldn’t even handle a month in prison. He’s the timid sort. Like I said.’

‘Do you live here alone?’ Malin asks.

‘Yes. I’ve lived alone since the divorce.’

‘And your lover? The doctor. Does he usually stay here?’

‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘Sorry,’ Malin says. ‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with us.’

‘There’s no love there,’ Katarina says. ‘Just really good sex. A few more times. The sort of thing a woman needs every so often. You know what I mean, don’t you?’

A text message from Tove.

‘Got your message. Was at the cinema.’

Of course.

She was going to the cinema.

What should I reply?

She replies: ‘Great! Now I know.’

No: ‘Are you coming around later?’

Zeke behind the wheel. On the way to her flat to drop her off.

Can’t deal with anyone but herself tonight. If that.

Skirts.

Tops.

Sandals.

A photograph album.

Malin’s life in a big heap on the hall floor when she went into the flat.

Bags and boxes full of her clothes, shoes, books and things. Neatly piled up, and when Malin realised what was in front of her in the flat she felt like crying, and she sat down on the hall floor, but however much she tried to squeeze out some tears, none came.

My things, the person I am. No, not the person I am, more like a receipt for the pointless person I’ve become.

Janne had turned up with her things from the house during the day, using her spare key to get in, then dropping it through the letterbox afterwards. She would have liked to pick up her things herself, would have liked them to be at home when she went, him and Tove, and they would have asked her to sit down at a ready-laid table and would offer her some hot stew that would take the edge off all the chill and rawness, the thirst and confusion.

Now, instead, this pile of life. In this shitty-fucking-tiny-musty-raw-damp-lonely flat.

Did Tove help Janne? Have they turned against me in tandem?

But what can I expect? I hit him. In front of Tove. How the hell could I? Am I any better than the father and brother in that honour killing?

God, how I miss you both. I miss you so much it crosses every boundary and you disintegrate and are replaced by something else.

But why isn’t Tove here? Tove, where are you? Your things? You could have brought it all at once, couldn’t you?

Malin sits with her back to the front door.

She has a bottle of tequila in her hand, but isn’t drinking. Instead she’s pulled out the files about the Maria Murvall case from the bags Janne left.

She reads.

Sees Maria Murvall sitting on the floor, like her, in another room. Alone, excluded, shut off, numb to the point of nothingness, maybe scared beyond the bounds of what the rest of us call fear.

Malin twists and turns all the facts in the case, as she’s done hundreds of times before.

What happened in the forest, Maria?

What were you doing there?

Who could hurt anyone the way he or she or it hurt you, where does that malice come from? Where do the sharp, living branches that ate their way into your genitals come from? The electrically charged spiders? The cockroaches with sharpened jaws that ate their way up your legs?

Evil is like a torrent, Malin thinks. Like tons of clay sliding down a hillside in a merciless autumn storm. A flood of death and violence wiping out every living thing in its path, leaving a desolate landscape behind it, ash lying in heaps on the ground, and we, the survivors, are forced to eat each other to survive.

Wrath summoned back. Set free.

Malin gets up, leaving the files and things in the hall. She goes into Tove’s room, sees the unmade bed, wishes Tove were lying there again, and she starts to cry when she realises that that bed, in many ways, is empty for good now, that she may never pick Tove up from the sofa in front of the television and carry her to bed, that the child Tove was has vanished, replaced by the young woman who measures everything around her, who evaluates and tries to stay as far as possible from any obvious pain. A person who doesn’t sleep a sleep of innocence.

In Malin’s dream, damp and darkness and cold become one and the same. They merge into a black light, and in the centre of that light is a secret, or possibly several secrets.

I loved, says a voice. Search in love. I hit, says the same voice. Search in the blows, another voice says in the dream. Young snakes, chopped to pieces by lawnmower blades move before her eyes, crawling out of the sewers in streets whose names she doesn’t know.

Then the voices fall silent, the mutilated young snakes vanish.

Malin.

This house is associated with you, Janne thinks as he stands in his kitchen sipping a glass of cold milk and eating slices of salami. Outside, the night is its own master, full of all the demons he has encountered in his life.

Malin, Janne thinks. It’s lonely out here in the forest without you, but these old wooden walls can’t contain the pair of us. The bed with my mother’s crocheted bedspread isn’t wide enough.

The house smells of damp and nascent mould, spores sent out in the night like silent malaria mosquitoes.

Muteness.

Like a soundless animal, that’s what it’s like, our love. That’s what you’re like, Malin, and I can’t handle it any more.

You’ve always accused me of running, and I certainly have, I’ve taken refuge in the care of others, people who needed me in Rwanda and Bosnia, and most recently in the borderlands of Ethiopia and Sudan. I was there last winter.

They called me again last week, the Rescue Services Agency, but I turned them down, I’ve done my bit, I’m going to stay and deal with my life, the way it looks right here, right now.

You’re the one who can’t deal with it, Malin, and as long as you aren’t prepared to look inside yourself, I can’t help you. Tove can’t help you. No one can help you.

But that’s over now, Malin. It doesn’t matter that you hit me. Nor that you did it in front of Tove. She’ll survive. She’s stronger than us. Smarter. That’s not what this is about.

I’m here in my house, and you’re welcome to visit, but not to move back in. It’s time for us to cut the chains of this love, and the still, soft desire that we’ve been tumbling around in for so long.

What is there beyond that love?

I don’t know, Malin. And that fills me with comfort and fear.

Tove.

It got confusing for Tove in the end.

You want me to call you, don’t you? If only to shout at you. It would never occur to you to call me. You’re too proud for that, though I don’t think you realise it. But we’re beyond phone calls now. I promise to watch over you as best I can, but now that you seem to have made up your mind to follow the path straight down into the darkness, there isn’t much I can do, is there?

Your boss, Sven, he called me today. I told him we’ve split up again, said that I was worried about you, just like him, and he said he might not have realised just how much you’d been drinking earlier this year, that he’s thinking of sending you on a short trip so that you can clear your thoughts. That’s a good idea, I told him. Because I can’t reach you, I said. You just get angry if I try. And he understood, and I told him our relationship is over, that it was easier to be straight with him than with you, that I probably couldn’t say it like that to you, to your face. That I should probably keep my distance.

And do you know what he said, Malin?

He said: ‘I promise to keep an eye on her. Trust me,’ he said, and he’s the sort of man you’re happy to entrust with the things you care about most.

I can live with the fact that you raised your hand against me. With the pain and sorrow of that. But not Tove’s look of confusion. She needs security now, Malin, confidence that this world is good, and means us human beings well, because even if she can look after herself it’s our duty to spare her from evil, to give her faith in goodness. That’s what this is about.

And I can hear you snort.

But that’s how it is. You don’t have to have any faith yourself, you just have to convey the idea of faith.

I don’t know how many nights I’ve lain awake and sweating in a soaking wet bed after dreams about people’s cruelty to one another. I’ve had thousands of nights like that, Malin, but I still haven’t lost my faith.

But I know when it’s time to move on.

I know when the darkness of night threatens to become the only thing that exists.

That’s why I came over with your things today, Malin. I knew you wouldn’t be at home. I carried the boxes upstairs on my own, I took my jacket off and laid it over your things so they wouldn’t get wet in the rain on the way from the car.

So that you would understand what I could never say.

Dad! Dad!

Tove knows she’s screaming in the dream. This is the dream she most often has, and in the chat rooms the others have tried to persuade her not to be scared of the dream but to welcome it as a chance to learn to live with what happened last summer.

The masked figure above her.

She herself immobile.

Dad’s and Mum’s voices close, yet still too far away, as the woman approached her with darkness and violence and a desire that everything should end so that everything could begin.

Together with the others she had tried to understand the woman who wanted to kill her. Tried to understand where her anger and evil had come from, and when Tove felt she understood, the fear had vanished and she learned to accept the dream.